Posts tagged ‘Scottie’

I was off Sunday, the day they decided to boil off the crayfish Scottie Wildcard gifted us, so I thought it would all gone and eaten up. But lo and behold, come my Monday opener, I found not only one and half trays of leftover boiled crayfish (I ate one–yummy!) but a shallow hotel pan full of the uncooked ones! So of course I put one on my knee and took a pic of it 😉

Monday’s opener was a little annoying because the plumbers came by to install the new dish machine and they took FOREVER, which cut into everyone’s time. They came in at 11am and didn’t finish til nearly 6pm. Still, not all of it was the plumber’s fault for my opener gone slightly astray. Sometimes there are little easy jobs that take forever and cut into prime opener time. Stuff like de-seeding peppers to char, or slicing a crap ton of leeks for blanching. Times like that I wish I had a twin or a clone or even a stage to help me take care of that piddly shit while I do something more meaningful with my time. You know, like actually cooking. Granted, Intern Theo came in to help, but he was scheduled for 2pm, when I wish I had a noon prep person. Whatever, the help was totally appreciated and welcome regardless.

Looks like the kitchen gods smiled on me a little because for all my hard work (I think they turned a blind eye for the 15 minutes I spent helping Armanzo out with his $5 Bingo scratch-off. I was helping out, not giving in to my Asian gambling habit! >_>;;;) I got to take home those crayfish and had a really awesome dinner. Yay!

I open again Tuesday, and Justin Large, aka Dad is back on Station 2. Woot!

Another busy night on Station 3. I should’ve known when I walked in at 4PM and the restaurant was nearly full =_=
It pretty much stayed like that the whole night. I’m SO glad I stocked myself up the night before because I never really got a chance to ever go downstairs. O_O Phew! Total covers by the end of the night: 270.

Other than that, not much to really say. Ruth was killin’ it on station 2. I held my own on 3. I sold all my foie (though I was super annoyed at cooking it in the first place), though I thought I’d cooked them all really nicely.

At some point in the evening, I looked up and Koren’s friend Scottie, aka Wildcard, was in the window talking with Armanzo. I know I haven’t mentioned Scottie much. At some point he was opening a lot for us, but once we hired more people and our staff numbers evened out, Scottie bowed out since he was there to help us out anyway.
Anyway, the reason Scottie came by was to drop off a crap load of crawfish for us (it filled up two full hotel pans). With corn. And some Zatarain’s. What the–?! Not that I’m even going to question this. I mean, it’s Wildcard fer cryin’ out loud. You don’t question him. Yay! Thanks Scottie!
Armanzo brought one crawfish up and had it in the window for a while before he gave it to me in a pint container with instructions to cut it in half and throw it on the plancha. I’ve never cut up a live specimen in half before, so this was cool. I felt a little bad since it was a little life and it was thrashing, but I said a little prayer, put it on a towel and then I cut it in half. Then I sprinkled some salt, pepper, and sumac on it and cooked it off for Armanzo.

Another highlight of the night was when bartender Mary Rose told me a story about how her roommate, Michelle. Two things to know about Mary Rose’s roomie: she’s Asian and a line cook at Gilt Bar. Anyway, so the story goes that Roomie was talking with someone somewhere (you know how I am about these details), and mentioned she was was a line cook. Apparently the other person in her conversation said, “Oh! You must be the Asian girl who works at Avec!” AHAHAHAHAHAHA!! While I feel a little sad for the roommate over the mistaken identity, I’m tickled pink that this person has been to Avec and has seen me. Someone knows me! I’m not just any ole Asian girl! I’m the one who works at Avec! Ehehe! \^_^/ Woot woot!

I’m off tomorrow but why do I get the feeling I’ll be seeing more line time on Station 2 next week…?

I leave you with the horrible picture of Blackbird’s pastry chef from Food&Wine that I mentioned a while back. We have a new dessert to replace the old hazelnut cake. It’s a lemon cake that comes with rhubarb compote among with some other accoutrements which I don’t know because I’ve never seen a completed cake. While the cake is tasty, I hate it because I’m required to heat it up. So everytime a ticket comes, I put a cake in the oven, and then when I plate it, I have to pop it out of its hot aluminum tin, and then rip it in half, while burning my fingertips on the hot sugar the cake is baked with. When I put it up in the window, instead of calling “cake!”, I say “Bryce sucks!”. It cracks Fred up.
In the name of petty revenge, here’s the picture:

It isn’t the case at the moment, but last year we had a squeeze bottle shortage on the line. What happened to them? I don’t know. Did some get thrown away accidentally? Did one of them fall on the plancha and melt? Who knows?

But we’re Avec, so we do the best with what we can.
And with the help of Wildcard Scottie… we came up with these:

Pfft! That’s a real squeeze bottle housed in the part that’s usually wrapped around the glass. We have wacky senses of humor.

At the the time, we were still selling the mushroom salad (and it was selling like crazy) so in his wildcard ways, he reused a lemon juice bottle and screwed on a squeeze bottle top for the sherry vinaigrette on station 3. It worked!

Of course, since then, we seem to be good on squeeze bottles (thanks to Scottie stealing two of them from Blackbird for us heh heh), though I think we really should nip this in the bud and just place an Edward Don order